


Science Sisters

by rosestone



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Science Bros, or the female equivalent thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosestone/pseuds/rosestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Betty comes back from her latest wild Bruce chase to New York and finds her old friend Jane Foster waiting for her.  It's been years, but they still get along just as well as they had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Science Sisters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



It was a late summer night when Betty came back to Culver. She’d gone to New York, leaving the fragile remnants of her relationship with Leonard in the dust, only to find Bruce long gone. She hadn’t expected to find him, really, but searching for Bruce was a part of her life now. Hear a rumour, go and investigate it. Collect newspaper clippings. Read conspiracy websites. Write conspiracies of her own. She was tired of it, tired of looking for a man she wasn’t sure existed anymore, but she didn’t know what else to do with herself.

She didn’t go back to Leonard’s house. Betty was pretty sure she wouldn’t be welcome there. Instead, she dug a key out of the bottom of her purse and went back to Culver University. Class would be starting up in a few weeks anyway, so she might as well neaten up in there. The excuse sounded weak even as she thought it.

Her door was open. Nobody else had a key - well, Leonard did, but he didn’t have a reason to go in there. Betty gripped her bag a little tighter and strode in, ready for a fight.

She stopped short. “Jane?”

The woman scribbling on her whiteboard didn’t look around. “Sorry. Just need to…”

“Sorry about this,” said another woman, who was sitting in one of the chairs near Betty’s desk. “Jane lost the key to her office, and she said she needed to talk to you, so we broke in. She kind of doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Well, I guess she could go to my place, but she’d have to sleep on the floor. I’m Darcy, by the way.”

Betty blinked at her. She and Jane hadn’t really spoken since undergrad. They’d been in an all-female science club together, and they’d been friends, but Jane had drifted out of the club eventually, more interested in doing science than in finding ways to improve female participation in it. Betty had just met Bruce then, and she hadn’t been spending as much time at the club either; while she’d been sad once she realised Jane was gone, she’d been too busy to catch up, and since their branches of science were fairly different, they’d never come into close contact since.

“Why does she want to talk to me?” Betty directed the question at Darcy. Jane was probably too deep in her equations to notice their discussion.

Darcy shrugged. “Something about your boyfriend? Or ex-boyfriend. She has a… complicated situation with a guy we met in New Mexico, and for whatever reason she thinks you could help her untangle it. No offense, but I’m pretty sure you can’t.”

Betty dumped her purse on her desk, wondering idly what Leonard had done with all her stuff. It might still be at his house, shoved in a closet somewhere. “No offense taken. I’m pretty sure my ex-boyfriend’s various issues have nothing to do with whatever Jane’s going through. I don’t mind talking to her, though. It’s been a long time since we caught up.”

They both glanced over at Jane. She was glancing between the whiteboard and a sheaf of papers on the table next to it. Betty hoped that meant she was checking her equations and finishing up, but knowing Jane, she might just have gone off on another tangent. She sighed and looked back at Darcy. “So, how do you know Jane?”

“I’m her graduate student,” Darcy said, leaning back in her chair. “She needed someone to help her out with some science stuff over the summer, I needed six science credits. A match made in heaven, right?”

“You’re not a science student yourself, then.”

Darcy grinned. “Does political science count?”

Betty smiled back. “In this context, I’m afraid not.”

“Y’know, this time last year I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. University was fun, but Poli Sci isn’t an area with a whole lot of job offers.”

“And now?” Betty asked, frowning.

“Well, you saw what happened in New York, right? Aliens and monsters and heroes. The world’s changing, and I’m gonna be at the forefront. And, well, if that doesn’t work out, I’m pretty sure Jane’s going to need an assistant for the foreseeable future.”

They looked back at Jane. Her hair was in a messy bun held together with two whiteboard markers and a rubber band; there was a long scribble of equations up one of her arms. She was squinting at the whiteboard, marker in her teeth.

“Jane’s a good person,” Betty said, feeling somehow like she had to defend her.

“Hey, no, I’m not saying anything against Jane. She’s great. She just gets a little… intense sometimes. For all I know, the next assistant she gets might spend a bunch of time organising her science and not realise that sometimes she needs a little nudge to remind her that food and sleep are things humans need. Personally I find the amount of time she can spend working without a break pretty impressive, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for her, y’know?”

Betty leaned back against her desk, smiling. “We used to do these - I guess you’d call them competitions, the Women in Science against some of the guys on campus. Science binges. Whoever gets the most science done without sleeping wins. Jane almost always won.”

Darcy snickered. “Yeah, I can see that.”

Jane slapped her marker down and strode over to them, scowling. “I don’t know how Stark does it.”

“Does what?” Darcy said, handing her a thermos and a muesli bar.

Jane bit the end off the muesli bar savagely. “They break the laws of physics. How do they break the laws of physics? They’re laws for a _reason!_ ”

Betty breathed steadily, ignoring the chill in her stomach. Jane really had come to talk to her about Bruce, then. She'd hoped maybe it would be something else.

Darcy squinted at Jane. “Thor breaks the laws of physics, yeah. Who’s they?”

“Hulk,” Betty said. “The green guy. Breaks the Law of Conservation of Mass on a regular basis.”

“And you’d know that how?” Darcy folded her arms.

Jane dropped into the other of Betty’s chairs and smiled wanly up at her. “I’m forming a superhero girlfriends’ club. Want to join?”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Darcy said.

“We’re not really…” Betty waved a hand in the air vaguely. “Hard to keep up a relationship when your boyfriend spends most of the time running from the law, you know?”

Jane frowned at her. “Then a superhero sort-of-girlfriends’ club? Because I’m not really sure if I’m dating Thor.”

Darcy recovered from her shock. “I’m gonna go ahead and say you shouldn’t. Because, okay, he’s super hot, but he’s probably going to outlive you by a million years. It’s not really an incentive to stick around, y’know?”

“That is a problem,” Jane agreed. “I thought maybe I’d come talk to you. Since you know about things like this.”

“It’s not exactly the same.”

“But it’s similar.”

Betty wondered what Jane was looking for here. She’d never been able to read Jane.

“Lemme ask a question here,” Darcy said. “Am I actually going to contribute anything to this discussion? ‘Cause I’m exhausted, and I know literally nothing about superhero boyfriends and the laws of physics they break.”

“You can go home if you want,” Jane told her. “I’ll talk to the department tomorrow about getting you those science credits.”

“Okay.” Darcy stood up, yawning. “Have fun, and try to get to bed before morning. Call me when you’re ready for science.”

She shouldered her bag and strode out. Betty’s office was a lot quieter in her absence. She focused on Jane, feeling an old, familiar twitch beneath her skin.

“I missed you,” Jane said, pulling her feet up to sit cross-legged on the chair. “Not at first -”

“Not when there was new and interesting science to do,” Betty said, grinning, and Jane stuck her tongue out at her. Betty giggled at it - at the ridiculousness of a grown woman sticking her tongue out like a child - and Jane joined in, a huge grin on her face. Betty let go and just laughed, the way you do when it’s somewhere between late at night and early in the morning and you’re tired and everything seems a hundred times funnier than it would in the light of day. She didn’t stop until her sides ached.

“It’s been a long time since I laughed like that,” she said finally, pushing herself up so she could sit on the desk behind her.

Jane tilted her head, hair falling across her face. “Did Bruce make you laugh?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Not since the Hulk, but before. Leonard - he’s the guy I’ve been seeing recently - Leonard never did. God, I’ve missed you.”

Jane smiled up at her, fingers twisting in her lap, and Betty was struck with another old feeling, this one grown less familiar with age.

She’d met Jane for the first time at the Women in Science meetings. She’d met Jane properly a few weeks later at a party her classmates had dragged her along to. Jane had found her lurking in a side room - _not hiding, I just needed a break_ \- and had kept her talking well into the night. After that they’d had a tradition. Any time either of them was at a party and wanted to get away from the noise, they’d sneak off together and talk, or argue science, or play a game.

The seventh time they’d done it, Jane had kissed her. She’d looked up at Betty through her bangs, waiting to be told no.

Betty had kissed her again instead.

It had never been a permanent relationship. Back then, Betty had been too nervous of losing her father’s good opinion to want to openly date a woman, and Jane wanted to form a properly large sample of people she’d slept with to figure out who she was attracted to. Their relationship waned when one or both of them was in a relationship and waxed when they were lonely. Betty had almost been relieved when she realised she and Jane weren’t moving in the same circles anymore; she didn’t have to worry that Jane would come to her, broken-hearted, and tempt her back into their old habits and away from Bruce.

Well. Bruce wasn’t here any more.

“Leonard,” Jane said. Testing the waters. “Are you two…”

“We were engaged. Then Bruce came back. He never got over the fact that I still cared more about Bruce than him. We might have fixed it, but I went running after Bruce again.” Betty tried to smile.

“And Bruce is gone again.”

“Yes.”

Jane stared up at her, biting her lip. “Do you want me to leave?”

“You were here before Bruce,” Betty said, her breaths coming a little quicker. “And you’re here after him.”

Jane unfolded her legs and stood up, smiling. “Does your couch unfold into a bed? Mine does.”

Betty slid off the desk. She took Jane’s hand, nerves fluttering now. It had been a long time since they’d done this.

“Are you -”

“Don’t ask me if I’m sure,” Jane sighed, an old refrain from their undergrad days, and stood up on tiptoes to kiss Betty.

Betty bent automatically to ease the strain on Jane’s neck, feeling arousal race through her body. Yes. She’d missed this.

Jane’s lips parted under hers. She tasted coffee and artificial flavourings and smiled, because that was so Jane. She broke away and pressed kisses up Jane’s cheek, ignoring the irritated noise Jane made. Jane’s hands slid up the back of her shirt. Betty shivered.

“Your hands are always so warm,” she muttered. Jane giggled as her lips brushed the sensitive hollow under her ear and unhooked her bra.

“Let me get your shirt off,” Jane said. They stepped apart. Betty tugged her shirt and bra off hastily. Jane’s pants caught at her shoes and she sighed, sitting down so she could untie them. Betty went to tug the fold-out bed open, since it seemed they’d be needing it soon. It was stiff and old, and just when Betty thought she’d figured out how to open it Jane walked up behind her and began tugging at her jeans distractingly.

She wasn’t sure, in the end, how they got the bed open, but at some stage they ended up lying on it. Betty was fleetingly glad that she’d left sheets on it the last time she folded it up. Then Jane tugged her underwear down and grinned, and all thought fled.

“Missed this,” she managed. Jane lifted her face from between Betty’s thighs.

“Of course you did,” she said. “None of them ever have the slightest idea how we work.”

“You’re way too coherent right now,” Betty said, shivering. “And none of them are like you.”

Jane smiled and bent down again. Betty moaned and tensed and came.

“That was nice and fast,” Jane said chirpily.

Betty glared at her. “Stop being smug and lie back.”

Jane smirked and rolled onto her back, legs spread. Betty knelt up and leaned over to kiss her, tasting herself on Jane’s lips and shivering again. She couldn’t remember, at that moment, why she and Jane had never dated, but she was pretty sure their reasons hadn’t been any good.

Later, when Jane was satisfied, they’d curl up on the tiny, lumpy fold-out bed and pick apart one another’s work. They’d argue math and rip apart hypotheses and build better ones from the wreckage of the old. Jane would describe whatever breakthrough she’d made in astrophysics for Betty, and she’d stare at the ceiling and imagine she saw Jane’s stars spinning up there in the dark until they both fell asleep. Tomorrow they’d go out for breakfast, and she’d steal the neighbouring tables’ cutlery to try to demonstrate her latest experiment for Jane. Maybe they’d do it again the next night, and the next, their stupid little reasons for staying away from one another washed away with the years. Maybe the next time she saw Bruce she’d be introducing him to Jane.

Right now, though, it was just the two of them in the dark. Like it should have been all along.


End file.
